Politics Journal: Mayawati’s Balancing Act in Uttar Pradesh

A BSP supporter wore a hat bearing the BSP party symbol and Ms. Mayawati’s poster during a rally in Lucknow, March 15, 2010.

Nearly eight months ago, Mohammed Javed was promised a ticket by Uttar Pradesh chief minister and leader of the pro-Dalit Bahujan Samaj Party, Kumari Mayawati, to fight the forthcoming election from Jaunpur Sadar, a constituency in the eastern part of the state.

But in January Mr. Javed was told by Swami Prasad Maurya, the chief of the BSP in the state, that the Jaunpur Sadar constituency ticket was instead going to fellow Dalit politician Tej Bahadur “Pappu” Maurya, even though he’d lost when he last contested the election from Jaunpur Sadar in 2007.

Crestfallen, Mr. Javed rushed to Lucknow, hoping to overturn the decision by the BSP high command. His plea, that he should get a shot at winning the seat because he had cultivated the local Muslim constituency (45,000 votes approximately) and that his land-owning family had for generations contributed both to the welfare of the local mosque and the temple, fell on deaf ears.

“Behenji,” he told India Real Time on the phone from Jaunpur, using the term “big sister” for Ms. Mayawati, “probably felt that there were too many Muslim candidates already in the fray, and that if I also stood, it would amount to further splintering the Muslim vote.”

The Congress party has fielded a Muslim, Nadeem Javed, as has the Samajwadi Party, Javed Ansari, in Jaunpur Sadar.

As she fights the most important political battle of her life, carefully weighing the pros and cons of caste merit and other considerations for the 403 seats that make up the Uttar Pradesh assembly, Ms. Mayawati may well have done the right thing in Jaunpur Sadar, in the larger interest of her party.

By giving a seat to Pappu Maurya, despite his failure last time, Ms. Mayawati was signaling a return to her core Dalit voter base. Of the approximately 20% Dalits that comprise the state’s population of close to 200 million, as many as 14-15% belong to the most backward Chamar and Pasi castes, Ms. Mayawati’s entrenched supporters.

Mr. Javed, who said he’d been overtaken by pain and sadness, or “dard,” since being knocked out of the electoral race, admitted that this time around Ms. Mayawati would have to pull out all the stops if she wanted to retain her dominant presence in state politics.

“The talk here, these days, is that the Samajwadi Party, along with the Congress, could edge out Mayawati and form the next government in UP. But we also know that such a government will not last long, that it is purely short-term, until the next general elections in 2014, when they will break up,” Mr. Javed added.

With voting for the first round of the seven-phase election looming on Feb. 8, the fact that people are actually talking about the Samajwadi Party and the BSP in the same breath means that the all-powerful BSP leader is already taking a knocking.

It isn’t clear, of course, whether the “leher” or “wave” is against Ms. Mayawati or in favor of the Samajwadi Party and its key leaders, Mulayam Singh Yadav and his son, Akhilesh, as well as the Congress party’s Rahul Gandhi.

While Mr. Gandhi and his strategists are clearly banking on stitching up the smallest of alliances, such as with the Quami Ekta Party – a pro-Muslim party whose influence is limited to the eastern Uttar Pradesh badlands of Ghazipur and Mau – with the Priyanka-Rahul charisma and every promise that the federal Congress-led government can make without attracting the Election Commission’s ire (such as a 4.5% Muslim quota in central jobs), the Samajwadi Party is looking to its traditional support base, the backward castes, as well as weaning the Muslims away from the BSP.

Sudha Pai, professor at the Centre for Historical Studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, pointed out to IRT that in Uttar Pradesh, the backward castes, which owe allegiance to the Samajwadi Party, and the Dalits, who support Ms. Mayawati, have been traditionally ranged against each other.

“In UP, the backwards are mostly land-owners, while the Dalits are landless. In a caste structure, where Dalits are seen to be at the bottom of the pyramid, the backwards become the direct oppressors of the Dalits. They compete for jobs, for land resources, for everything,” she said.

Sajjad Hussain/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Every political party worth its salt in Uttar Pradesh is eyeing the roughly 20% Muslim vote.

“You would expect them to gang up and fight against the forward castes, but the truth is that in a region where land reform was hardly even attempted, leave alone failed, the backward castes have encroached upon the panchayat lands. Removing them from these lands now is not only very, very difficult, it’s practically impossible,” she added.

She noted that Ms. Mayawati was never able to redistribute land in Uttar Pradesh in all her five years in power because of the specter of caste clashes that would follow. In fact, Congress leader Digvijay Singh carried out such an experiment when he was chief minister in Madhya Pradesh from 1993-2003. It failed spectacularly, degenerating into a “virtual civil war between the Dalits and the backward castes.”

And in 1993, a coalition government in Uttar Pradesh between the BSP and the Samajwadi Party, in the wake of the demolition of the Babri mosque in 1992, fell apart very quickly because the antagonistic caste groupings began to assert themselves. Mostly, the Samajwadi Party wasn’t willing to be subordinate to a Dalit leader.

One reason for the political churning evident in Uttar Pradesh these days is the rising aspirations of the Dalit community. The truth is that Dalit parents are sending their children to school in larger numbers than ever before, and there is some evidence that Ms. Mayawati has spent money on creating infrastructure, especially housing, for Dalits.

Social scientists like Ms. Pai point out that the Dalits will hardly vote for Rahul Gandhi’s Congress, “because, tell me, does the Congress have one Dalit or backward caste leader you can seriously write about?”

Election Commission of India

Small wonder every political party worth its salt in Uttar Pradesh is eyeing the roughly 20% Muslim vote. Ms. Mayawati, Mr. Gandhi, as well as Akhilesh Yadav, are keenly aware that the Muslims of Uttar Pradesh could tilt the fate of the election.

If that means that the chances of fragmenting the Muslim vote increases, here’s another googly: The right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party, focusing on the upper and middle castes, could become an unlikely gainer in the state.

In Jaunpur Sadar constituency, where Mohammed Javed lost out, the BJP candidate, Surinder Singh, may well benefit from the division of the 45,000-strong Muslim vote between the Samajwadi Party and the Congress.

“If the minority vote gets divided, the BJP may just manage to take out the seat. That would complicate the UP picture even further,” Mr. Javed added gloomily.

Jyoti Malhotra is a freelance journalist based in New Delhi. She writes for India’s Business Standard daily and for Pakistan’s Express Tribune.